Another all-virtual university -- this one created by a major publisher -- is about to go online. The institution, announced just over a year ago by the Harcourt General publishing company, received approval to operate from the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education last month.
Officials said they would begin marketing degree programs and recruiting students in November. This month, the institution, Harcourt Higher Education, plans to test its systems by offering a dozen courses to the company’s 12,000 employees.
With state licensing complete, the company will seek accreditation for the college from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
Five programs will be offered at first, leading to five degrees: associate and bachelor’s degrees in information technology and in business, and bachelor’s degrees in health science.
Robert V. Antonucci, the institution’s president, said it had already hired a dean and full-time faculty member for each of its four schools: business, health-care systems and administration, information technology, and general studies.
Each full-time faculty member will supervise 25 adjunct professors, who will teach groups of 10 to 12 students. That size is small enough for students to get individual attention, but large enough to create “a sense of community,” which is important in online teaching, he said.
More than 600 people have applied for adjunct slots, Mr. Antonucci added.
The college will not be called Harcourt University, as the company had announced at first (http://www.harcourthighered.com), because Massachusetts law requires an institution to offer at least two doctoral degrees before it can call itself a university. The other logical choice, “Harcourt College,” is the name the company already uses for its higher-education-publishing division.
Courses will cost $900 each and be 6 or 12 weeks in duration. Mr. Antonucci said the company hoped to have 50,000 to 100,000 enrollments within five years. (If one student takes, say, three courses, that would amount to three enrollments.) “That’s aggressive,” he acknowledged.
In addition to delivering courses directly, Harcourt Higher Education hopes to sell its courses to other companies or colleges. Some of the courses require textbooks published by Harcourt imprints, but some will use books from other sources.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A59